Among the most popular literature
of the 19th century, Louisa May Alcott’s
work is timeless. Some of her classic books never
have gone out of print, and much of her work only
recently has been discovered. Alcott’s writing
not only informs readers about the period in which
she wrote, but it also reveals volumes about her
life and family.

Likewise, the covers that graced
her books in the 19th and early 20th centuries
offer an education regarding trends in book binding
at the time. The PBO database currently has seventy-five editions of Alcott's books. More will be added.

Although born in Pennsylvania (29
November 1832), Alcott spent most of her life in
Boston and Concord,
Massachusetts. Educated at home, Alcott and
her sisters received from their parents a wealth
of knowledge and a sense of moral responsibility.

Amos Bronson Alcott was not only a teacher but
also a philosopher and prominent Transcendentalist.
The reform-minded Abigail May was involved in the
abolitionist and suffrage movements.

pbw00009Little Women(Roberts Bros., 1880)

As a child, Alcott spent a great deal of time
with her father’s friends, Ralph Waldo Emerson
and Henry David Thoreau. Perhaps drawing inspiration
from these notable figures, Alcott began writing
when she was young. Her stories first found a public
venue as plays that she and her sisters acted
out for friends. She began publishing poetry and
short stories in magazines in 1852, when “Sunlight” appeared
in Peterson’s Magazine under the
pseudonym Flora Fairfield. Her first book, a collection
of stories called Flower
Fables,
was published in 1854.

However, writing was not her only occupation.
Because her family was poor, Alcott began working
at the age of fifteen to help support her parents and
sisters. She found any job that would hire a woman,
working as a teacher, seamstress, governess, and
household servant, among other things.

Alcott’s real life fed her writing
in many ways. In 1863, she published Hospital
Sketches,
based on the letters she had written home from
Washington, D.C., where she served as a nurse during
the Civil War. The book was not the only product
of Alcott’s stay in the nation’s capital.
She unfortunately contracted typhoid fever, and
although she recovered from the illness, the mercury
treatment doctors gave her would plague her for
the rest
of her life.

pbw00251A Modern Mephistopheles (Roberts Bros., 1889)

Alcott’s childhood informed her most famous
book, Little Women. Alcott was working as editor
for the magazine Merry’s Museum when book
publisher Thomas Niles asked her to write a story
for girls. She drew inspiration for the main characters
from her family, basing tomboy Jo on herself. Written
in less than three months, the book was an instant
success. She immediately penned a second volume,
Good Wives, which was published in 1869. The two
volumes thereafter have been published as one volume,
known only as Little Women. The sequels Little
Men and Jo’s Boys were equally popular.

Although the Little Women series and many of Alcott’s
other works were essentially written for children,
Alcott had another side. She penned a number of
sensational, adult-oriented stories anonymously and under the pen
names A. M. Barnard, Aunt Weedy, Flora Fairfield,
Oranthy Bluggage, and Minerva Moody. The Gothic
thrillers she authored as Barnard were particularly
lucrative.

pbw00103Lulu's Library(Roberts
Bros., 1886)

The financial success of Alcott’s books
yanked her family from poverty, but her home life
still was fraught with tragedy. Her sister Elizabeth
died of scarlet fever prior to the publishing of
Little Women, a blow from which Alcott’s
mother never recovered. In 1877, Abigail May
died as well. Two years later, Alcott’s youngest
sister, May, died from complications after childbirth.
May lived long enough to name her daughter Louisa
May, and she asked Alcott to raise her namesake.

Alcott took care of young Lulu for eight years,
while her own health rapidly declined from the
mercury poisoning. She fell into a coma while caring
for
her ailing father, who died in March of 1888. Alcott
followed two days later. She was buried across
the feet of her parents and sister Elizabeth.

Alcott remained busy during the twenty years between
the publication of Little Women and her death at
the age of fifty-six. Following in her mother’s
footsteps, she took up the cause of suffrage, writing
for The Woman’s Journal and canvassing to
encourage women to register to vote after Massachusetts
granted women suffrage for school, tax, and bond
issues. Alcott became the first woman in Concord
to register, voting in the village’s school
committee election in 1879.

The Alcott legacy lives on in her writing, as
well as in the films that have been made of her
books. Although more than thirty volumes appeared during
her lifetime, she was more prolific than most of her contemporaries
ever knew. Much of her work has been found in her
papers and published in the century since her death.

Bibliography (full text available
for hyperlinked titles)
NOTE: Only books Louisa May Alcott
published under her own name are listed. Most of
the stories written anonymously and under pseudonyms
were republished in
collections that are listed under her posthumous work below.

Posthumous
The following volumes consist of work previously
published in periodicals or under pseudonyms,
as well as previously unpublished work discovered
in the Alcott papers.

A Modern Mephistopheles, and A Whisper
in the Dark, 1889Life, Letters, and Journals, 1889Comic Tragedies Written by "Jo" and "Meg" and
Acted by the "Little Women," 1893Becky's Christmas Dream, 1895Marjorie’s Three Gifts, 1899 Doll's Journey, 1902Letters from the House of Alcott,
1914 Three Unpublished Poems, 1919 A Round Dozen, 1963Glimpses of Louisa: A Centennial Sampling of
the Best Short Stories, 1968Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers,
1975 Plots and Counterplots: More Unknown Thrillers,
1976Trudel’s Siege, 1976Diana and Persis, 1978Transcendental Wild Oats, 1981Works, 1983Napoleon Bonaparte, 1984Hidden Louisa May Alcott: A Collection of Her
Unknown Thrillers, 1985Selected Letters, 1987Works of Louisa May Alcott, 1987The Lay of a Golden Goose, 1987Double Life: Newly Discovered Thrillers,
1988Alternative Alcott, 1988